I've got a pretty successful balcony garden. Today, a friend gave me two pumpkin babies (8cm and 5cm ish). I've never planted pumpkin before - oh! No. When I was in second grade and had a proper garden, I planted pumpkin once, and there were gorgeous flowers but no pumpkins grown. Anyway. Balcony garden. Pumpkinlets. Do you think it's better to plant them in narrow but deep pots or in shallow but long pots? I can give the dimensions if anyone thinks that would make a difference.

I'd love to grow pumpkins on my balcony! I hope yours will be a succes. I'd just put them in the very biggest pot you can fit in. I guess it should be at least a little bit deep. But I've never done it myself so some awesome experienced person may have better advice.

i would say wide and deep- they grow quite deep in the garden. add lots of compost. make sure that once it gets to be fruiting time that there are bees (where we are it's bumblebees almost exclusively that pollinate) or you do hand pollination or you'll get no fruit.

My pumpkin plant took over a good third of my vegetable patch. I've seen gourds grow up trellises and arches before, though, so as long as you keep it well-trained and well-fed, it shouldn't be too hard.

_________________Moon - "This is the best recipe in the history of recipes forever."

go out there every single day and train the vines, trim away excess leaves, etc. hand pollinate the flowers with a q-tip if you don't have a lot of bees. lots of pumpkins = small fruit, just one or two pumpkins = big fruit. water them like crazy.

are you growing them down the balcony, or up a trellis? if growing up, after the fruit sets, don't let the vine keep growing. keep trimming it back, or you'll shade out all the rest of your plants.

I've germinated some of the seeds I mentioned last year and will be potting them soon. I have a small concrete yard and don't think that building a raised bed is going to be feasible, so I'm wondering if using an old bath would work instead. They're deep and wide and have an inbuilt drainage point. Any opinions on this?

Yes you'll need a BIG asparagus trellis for sure. Last year my pumpkin vines were like 25 feet long, no joke yo.

Seriously. I grew winter squash last year (so, same thing really) from just two plants and they took over my entire porch and yard. See this post, specifically this photo:

Except it got bigger than that.

Agree! We planted pumpkins last year and they stretched the entire length of our yard. It was insane. We may have gotten 2 or 3 actual pumpkins out of the huge mass of vines, leaves, and flowers. We wound up putting in our front yard for fall/halloween decorating. The flowers are really pretty and they get huge. I didn't get a chance to eat any though. This year for sure!

i think it would be awesome! anything as big as a bushel basket (or half a barrel) should be enough, i would think.

I agree. I think you could plant 2-3 pumpkins in a bathtub. And having them grow over the concrete patio would be fine, but you might want to put a large plastic lid or some other barrier under each pumpkin so it's not in direct contact with the concrete.

_________________Formerly Kaleicious. I still love kale, but no more than lots of other garden greens too! Orach is currently my favorite.

I remembered we had pumpkin before in our small yard and since bees are scarce so, we did soft brush pollination. Use small brush. Brush the pollen from the stamen of male flower on the pistil of female flower. But, you have to do this when the flower is open.

i thought the squash vine borer was the most depressing thing about growing pumpkins. nope. it's the pickle worm. :-( i had 2 beautiful baby pie pumpkins that survived everything. i was amazed! i went to harvest them, and the one pumpkin that was fully ripe just came off the vine and had a pill bug chewing on a little bit of the flesh. no biggie, i didn't need a stem, and it's just flesh, i would have cooked it up soon enough anyway. i sat them out in the sun to cure a little and then the next day, the one without the stem started turning to mush. :-( i also had some holes in my zucchinis and was hoping they were only going to eat those, but no. they attacked my precious pie pumpkin.

my second one that was 4/5 ripe had a little hole, and i saw the buggar crawling into it. i dug him out, and plan on cooking that one today.the seeds from the first one smell really bad, so i guess i don't need to manually ferment those. (i just hope they didn't ferment for too long. gahh! so smelly.

i'm considering only growing butternuts next year. i've had my heart broken by the pumpkins too many times. (i'll save the seeds for prepping purposes, but i won't grow them while i have such limited space. also, i've read the only real organic method against these guys is to grow them in a completely enclosed hoop house made with screen material.)

Yuk, Supercarrot. I've never seen a squash borer, and never even heard of a pickle worm. But I do have my share of pests. In Portland our summers have been cooler than normal the last several years, but saved by long, warm falls into late October. This year summer was a bit warmer, but Fall has hit super early, and in my cool microclimate the only winter squash that I'm likely to harvest are 3 Red Kuri and 1-2 Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato squash. All my butternuts are still a bit immature. And cold rain every day is killing my tomatoes (off-topic) with splitting and diseases, just when they finally should peak.

_________________Formerly Kaleicious. I still love kale, but no more than lots of other garden greens too! Orach is currently my favorite.